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- [00:00]
Jack Armstrong
This is an iHeart podcast broadcasting live from the Abraham Lincoln radio Studio at the George Washington Broadcast Center. Jack Armstrong and Joe Getty.
- [00:14]
Joe Getty
Armstrong and Getty.
- [00:16]
Jack Armstrong
And now here's Armstrong and Getty. Here are the people of Chicago telling the nation's worst mayor, Brandon Johnson, what they think of being a sanctuary city.
- [00:36]
Joe Getty
This was going to happen to you. You got Cash Patel and Pam Bundy that you're going to have to deal with sooner than later. Then it's going to be an audit. Next it's going to be an investigation. Then it's going to be an indictment commission. That's what's going to happen to you. Mr. Brandon Johnson, I'm up here. The people of Chicago, we're done with you. You so strong about protecting those aliens, but you won't do nothing for the US Citizen. So that's the mayor of Chicago getting a tongue lashing from someone of his constituents.
- [01:13]
Jack Armstrong
Right. Really solidly positioned as America's worst mayor. But, Jack, there is a threat in the distance gaining ground.
- [01:22]
Joe Getty
Yeah. Election is today. The primary for the mayor of New York is today. And because it's such a heavily Democratic system, and in this case, I mean, because there have been some Republican mayors, as you may remember, Rudy Giuliani back in the day, Michael Bloomberg, who was a Republican for a while.
- [01:42]
Jack Armstrong
Well, and Rudy was known as America's mayor at the end of his terms because he'd done such a brilliant job.
- [01:47]
Joe Getty
But there is no Republican candidate like that. So whoever wins the Democratic primary today is going to be the mayor. Although it's going to kick into ranked choice voting. But it looks like even with the ranked choice choice voting situation, this Zoran Mamdani is going to end up being the mayor and beat out old Cuomo, who is a crook. I mean, it's just a horrible human being, but he's the one that every normal person is hoping ends up being the mayor because of the other choice, the Communist Zoran Mamdani. Young guy has never done anything in his life except for live off of his parents and. And badmouth America. I mean, he's. He's that crowd.
- [02:27]
Jack Armstrong
Yeah.
- [02:28]
Joe Getty
That is so popular on college campuses.
- [02:30]
Jack Armstrong
Big fan of Hamas, too. I mean, really active Hamas support, which.
- [02:34]
Joe Getty
Has got to be part of the reason. The tremendous turnout of the young there, along with some of his socialist policies, which we'll go through some of those right now. If elected. He does plan to spend or says he's going to. He doesn't have the ability to do this. And the money doesn't exist. But he wants to spend $65 million on gender affirming care for all trans people, including minors. He promises to investigate New York hospitals who have stopped providing the services to minors.
- [03:03]
Jack Armstrong
Oh my God.
- [03:04]
Joe Getty
And establish an office of LGBTQIA plus affairs at City hall to put pressure on these hospitals to continue to provide services to kids.
- [03:15]
Jack Armstrong
This guy is Satan. I thought I hated him before. Now I really hate him.
- [03:19]
Joe Getty
He's promised to keep the NYPD emaciated, underfunded and understaffed and take it further. He wants to. He, he agrees completely with the idea of globalizing the intifada. And we all know how that has turned out or what that means. But we'll look at a couple of his other signature proposals as he that he has here. He wants to freeze rents. Stacking the rent guidelines board with people who agree with his freeze the rent program, which I don't know if you've had the least bit of economics ever looked into this ever before. The whole rent freeze thing doesn't work.
- [04:03]
Jack Armstrong
Yeah, give me 30 seconds on that before you continue the list. So the Wall Street Journal's talking about this guy and they begin by quoting this 23 year old paralegal gal who's desperately looking for an apartment and hoping to find roommates or whatever. And it sounds really difficult and expensive. And that's one of the main reasons supports Zoran Mamdani for New York Mayor, because this guy is going to freeze rents and really stick it to landlords. So she supports him and I just want to sit her down. Look, you're a paralegal, you're probably reasonably bright. Sweetheart, anybody who conceived of offering rental property is going to say, wow, they just made it much less attractive. I'm not going to do it. And you know what? I'm going to take a lot of my rental properties off the market. Do you think that's going to make your life better? Better or worse? Prices send a message. High priced rent sends the message, we need more rental units. We'll pay for rental units, give us more rental units. And the idea that this communist is going to end that signal being sent to the market and that's going to be good for people is stupid with a capital stupid.
- [05:16]
Joe Getty
He wants to deal with food costs and the prevalence of food deserts, which has been debunked many times over the years, but by creating government run grocery stores. Government run grocery stores in New York.
- [05:32]
Jack Armstrong
So when people just like steal everything, only one customer out of 10 even goes to the checkout line. What's he gonna do then is he gonna crack heads or is he gonna say they're looting it back or what?
- [05:44]
Joe Getty
He wants to pay for all these different things, the surgeries for minors and cracking down on the schools and all these different things by, you guessed it, taxing New York's rich. Millionaires already pay 41% of the state's income taxes and he wants to increase the taxes on that crowd. People have been fleeing New York in the same way that they've been fleeing California. They've been fleeing New York City in the same way. They've been free fleeing, for instance, the San Francisco Bay area for the same reasons.
- [06:15]
Jack Armstrong
Did you see Ron DeSantis's tweet about this? He posted one of the headlines about what Mom Donnie wants to do. And he said, when you thought Palm State Real estate couldn't go any higher or Palm Beach Real Estate couldn't go any higher because, yeah, a lot of the moguls, a lot of successful people in New York are like, all right, that's it, I'm heading to Florida.
- [06:35]
Joe Getty
A couple of grocery magnates have said they will leave the state or the city if he is elected. Mamdani has walked back his support for defunding the police. The most toxic political phrase anybody's ever invented. It's hard to believe anybody would still say it. And he was still saying it up until a couple of days ago, which he once called a feminist issue for some reason.
- [06:59]
Jack Armstrong
Somebody, somebody gotta help me.
- [07:00]
Joe Getty
But according to the New York Post, he's still the only candidate who won't commit to hiring more NYPD officers, even as the force is well below normal numbers. There's his unhealthy fixation on the state of Israel, says the New York Post, which has been with him since he helped found Bin College Students for Justice in Palestine chapter when he was a student, which is the last time he really did anything. And he has refused to denounce globalize the Intifada as a chanting phrase even after the murders in a variety of places around the country. This guy is a complete socialist, Marxist communist nut job. And it looks like he's going to win as the turnout already in New York today is very high and it seems to be driven by the youth. It's kind of like an AOC style result that's about to happen.
- [08:02]
Jack Armstrong
Wow. Wow.
- [08:04]
Joe Getty
Although he's way further down the road of socialist craziness than aoc.
- [08:11]
Jack Armstrong
Yeah, I mean, her being a waitress, bartender is like, grounded her in the real world way, way beyond this character, a trustafarian Radical activist his entire life.
- [08:22]
Joe Getty
Government run grocery stores, government decides rents. You're going to investigate hospitals who stop doing surgeries to change the gender. Using my finger quotes of children.
- [08:37]
Jack Armstrong
Right, right.
- [08:38]
Joe Getty
That's a heck of a thing to run on. And that's going to be the winning candidate, it looks like in Newark.
- [08:43]
Jack Armstrong
I just scanned the rest of the journal article about the, the housing situation. And they quote a handful of young professionals. This person's an artist, so please. But here's a software engineer, 26 years old, couch surfing because the apartments that he really wants just, they're snapped up off the market in seconds. There's an under supply. So what we need to do is have the government crack down on landlords and freeze the rents. What are we teaching? He asks, knowing full well the answer in our schools. What? How did these people, these young professionals, not have the most basic grasp of the way markets actually work? You know what? I had a pretty good public school education and I was really fuzzy on that stuff on why rent controls are a terrible idea. They're an awful idea. They punish the very people they claim to help, except for a very small subset of them that get lucky. But why don't American kids know this? Because they're busy learning about the genderbred person and how you can have your healthy genitals lopped off if you momentarily decide you're the other sex.
- [09:52]
Joe Getty
That's a good question. I don't remember when I read, you know, pieces about rent control and why it doesn't work, but it wasn't. I didn't learn in school.
- [10:02]
Jack Armstrong
I mean, look, if you want to.
- [10:04]
Joe Getty
Argue, I guess because. Because schools are run by lefties and it's always a lefty proposal. So they're not going to teach you in school that rent control doesn't work.
- [10:12]
Jack Armstrong
Right, right. I was just gonna say if you wanted to argue about so called supply side economics. And there are some arguments. Well, it's slow or it's indirect or the rich design tax policy. So the so called trickle down, which is a terrible term invented by lefties. It doesn't happen well enough. It doesn't happen. We could get into an argument about supply side economics. My side is right. Definitely. But you're not out of your mind. If you're arguing in favor of rent control, you're a madman.
- [10:44]
Joe Getty
Oh yeah.
- [10:45]
Jack Armstrong
Makes no sense.
- [10:45]
Joe Getty
I mean, just why don't any of these people ever picture themselves as if they owned a rental house? What would you do if the city decided you don't get to charge as Much rent as you want or the. The prevailing. You would decide, well, I'm. I'm going to sell the place. Then I guess I'll sell it because housing prices are high and there's a lot of value in this place, so I'm going to sell it as opposed to rent it. Or if you were considering buying some places to rent out, you wouldn't. If you don't control your rent.
- [11:16]
Jack Armstrong
And they mentioned that not only would a rent freeze discourage new investment, but it discourages spending on maintaining existing units.
- [11:24]
Joe Getty
Oh, obviously, I'd never even thought about that. But of course it would, because you.
- [11:27]
Jack Armstrong
Have the supply artificially constricted, and so everybody's so desperate you don't have to. Yeah, there's cockroaches. Fine. Organize them into a cockroach circus or move on. I don't care. There are people lined up 100 deep to rent this place. Screw you. Yeah, the paint's peeling. Paint it yourself.
- [11:46]
Joe Getty
Cornell Professor Russell Weaver, who teaches courses in equitable community Change.
- [11:52]
Jack Armstrong
Oh, you're sending your kid to college.
- [11:55]
Joe Getty
To take a course called Equitable Community change.
- [11:59]
Jack Armstrong
Calls tenants tear down our colleges to the. To the studs. Yes.
- [12:03]
Joe Getty
Calls tenants the sleeping giant in future election and how this is going to be the. The issue that gets Zoran over the line. There are, I think, six candidates still left. They started with eight on the Democratic side. Three of them were running on freezing rents, but the other two didn't get any traction. This guy is going to be the one that wins.
- [12:26]
Jack Armstrong
You know, this is a harsh sentence even without using the word. But the president used this word today. We ought to replay that. You've heard that somebody should go F themselves. Renters are about to mercilessly. They are about to absolutely screw themselves in New York.
- [12:51]
Joe Getty
Yeah, it'll be interesting to watch. The New York Post gives a bunch of examples of cities across the country where they've tried it and it didn't work. For instance, Colorado state law now forbids any sort of rent control in any city because they tried it various places and it didn't work in Colorado.
- [13:07]
Jack Armstrong
Ain't exactly Oklahoma.
- [13:09]
Joe Getty
No. No, it is not. Yeah, the president dropped an F bomb appropriately, I think today. Among other things, about the ceasefire, which we haven't talked about for a little bit. Lots of stuff on the way. Stay here.
- [13:21]
Jack Armstrong
Armstrong and Getty.
- [13:23]
Joe Getty
There's a healthy dose of skepticism because the Iranians don't have a great track record of meeting whatever the they talk about, either publicly or privately. Is that fair? That's more than fair. And in fact, in recent hours, Iran's parliament has withdrawn approval to work with the iea. They've talked about pulling out from the Non Proliferation Treaty. Iran remains aggressive within the. Within the region Iran government. Iran's government is aiming to survive at a time when its air defenses are in essence so weak that Israel or the United States can own any building in the country, let alone the sky. So, in essence, it's looking to survive and to stabilize itself. But we'll see how the next few days play out. Yeah.
- [14:06]
Jack Armstrong
So Trump and Norm Rule, who's a longtime diplomat dealing with Iran, pointing out that they're in survival mode right now. So they'll promise anything, they will commit to anything, but they don't mean it.
- [14:17]
Joe Getty
Huh. So Trump announces, like, middle of the day yesterday, there's been a ceasefire. Iran and Israel have agreed. Then both Iran and Israel, some spokespeople came out and said, no, we haven't. And then by the end of the day, both Iran and Israel had spokespeople that said, we did agree to a ceasefire. But then they kept lobbing stuff at each other, like overnight and into the morning and that sort of thing Anyway. So Trump was asked questions about all this by reporters. We'll start here.
- [14:49]
Donald Trump
Iran will never rebuild its nucleus from there. Absolutely not. That place is under rock. That place is demolished. The B2 pilots did their job. They did it better than anybody could even imagine. They hit late in the evening. It was dark with no moon, and they hit that target with every one of those things, and that place is gone. But when I see CNN all night long, they're trying to say, well, maybe it wasn't really as demolished as we thought it was demolished. You take a look at the pinpricks and you see that place is gone.
- [15:22]
Joe Getty
So that's to the fact that, you know, what's Israel got the Iran got to fight for at this point? They've lost their nuclear program or at least the facilities where they're rich in uranium, we think. But then to the ceasefire are. Is each side committed to the cease fire? And Trump was asked about that.
- [15:42]
Donald Trump
Israel. As soon as we made the deal, they came out and they dropped a load of bombs, the likes of which I'd never seen before. The big, biggest load that we've seen. I'm not happy with Israel. You know, when I say, okay, now you have 12 hours. You don't go out in the first hour, just drop everything you have on them. So I'm not happy with them. I'm not happy with Iran.
- [16:02]
Jack Armstrong
Either.
- [16:02]
Donald Trump
But I'm really unhappy if Israel is going out this morning because the one rocket that didn't land, that was shot, perhaps by mistake, that didn't land. I'm not happy about that.
- [16:14]
Joe Getty
You know what?
- [16:15]
Donald Trump
We basically have two countries that have been fighting so long and so hard that they don't know what the they're doing. You understand that?
- [16:26]
Jack Armstrong
I don't get why one of his advisors doesn't say to him, no, Israel going out and like going hard and hot and hard at it at the beginning of that 12 hours is precisely what you'd expect them to do. They have a mission to accomplish. They have agreed to an artificial end to it. So they're going to get it done. I don't get how he doesn't get that.
- [16:51]
Joe Getty
So where are we right now? Wondering if the ceasefire will hold.
- [16:55]
Jack Armstrong
The usual ceasefire situation. A shaky ceasefire seems to be holding.
- [17:00]
Joe Getty
Jim Man, Iran has no cards. They. They're defenseless. I can't imagine what they'd get out of continuing to fight. I hate Do Gooders. We'll explain that coming up.
- [17:13]
Jack Armstrong
Armstrong and Gettysburg. More than 16 billion passwords for Google.
- [17:18]
Joe Getty
Apple, Facebook and other platforms have been leaked in one of the largest hacks of all time.
- [17:23]
Jack Armstrong
Ooh, it's pretty scary. Now everyone knows your Facebook password but you. What is it again? Password.
- [17:33]
Joe Getty
1, 2, 3. It seems like once daily I end up at a website that I haven't used in forever and it needs the password and I gotta go to whatever to try to figure out what my password is. Just like I keep thinking that we're gonna get past this moment and it will be something old people talk about years from now. You used to have to have passwords for each site and memorize them or write them down or have an app that kept them or whatever that that's gonna go away and they'll use our eyes or our thumbprints. I don't know what they'll use.
- [18:05]
Jack Armstrong
But in the always vexing when you're in the middle of rushing through something, notice that this password has appeared on a list of hacked, you know, whatever the hell. Would you like to change it now?
- [18:16]
Joe Getty
No, I wouldn't.
- [18:17]
Jack Armstrong
Oh, no, no.
- [18:18]
Joe Getty
I just assume all kinds of Russian mobsters have my passwords. I just want to get into this. I would opt probably for a no password on most sites. I don't care if you can get into my DMV information. How about. How about you let me in it with no password whenever I want to get in?
- [18:34]
Jack Armstrong
Oh, you fool. You'll Be hacked. And then what?
- [18:37]
Joe Getty
Hacked into my DMV information.
- [18:39]
Jack Armstrong
All right, your Nordstrom Rack account or whatever. What if the Chinese knew what size pants you own? Then what?
- [18:46]
Joe Getty
We got a couple of texts. One, an economics professor at high school, said he taught why rent control didn't work and stuff like that. But he has a feeling. All the students remembered was whatever TikTok video they were looking at. Well, it was. We got another text. Why are you guys talking about New York? You don't think it's interesting that the biggest city in America, maybe the most important city in the world, is about to elect a communist as a mayor? I find that pretty interesting.
- [19:14]
Jack Armstrong
They never text again. Yeah. Amen to that. Yeah. Never text again.
- [19:18]
Joe Getty
Never text again. So I got started on this jag because it's happening at a local skateboard park. And it reminded me of something that happened to me years ago in la. And I wanted to tell this story again because it drives me nuts. It's a great example of the conflict of visions that Thomas Sowell talks about between conservatives and progressives and just different ways of seeing the world and stuff like that where, like, I can't get in the mind. I can't even understand the point of view of the people I'm about to talk about and they can't understand my point of view. So we got a local story here in Folsom, California. That's right, that Folsom. I heard the train had come and coming around the bend. I shot a guy just for fun, whatever that whole thing. Folsom Skateboard park, where for a couple of reasons, they're talking about doing away with the attendance at the skateboard park. The attendance job is to, it says, stop graffiti from happening, break up fights, and to make sure skateboarders have helmets and, and. And pads on. Wouldn't they skateboard? The city is saying they don't have enough money for the attendant. A whole bunch of skateboarders showed up to various meetings and said, nobody goes because nobody's gonna wear all those pads. So what's the point? I just saw a video up on the TV and it showed one kid in this giant, glorious looking skateboard park, one kid skateboarding. And it said on there, it said they've had 580 people a month on average during summertime.
- [20:55]
Jack Armstrong
That's nobody.
- [20:56]
Joe Getty
That's. I did the math. That's 19 a day or something like that. That's nobody. You should have 200 kids a day there. I've had this experience. Drives me nuts. When I went to Los Angeles. My son was super into skateboarding. One time we went. We went to LA just to do, like a tour of skateboard parks. He'd never been to different ones. And I thought LA's probably got a lot of great skateboard parks. We'd been to the one on Venice beach and check that out. As we traveled around almost every skateboard park we went to, which was empty on a beautiful day. 80 degrees, like it always is in LA. 80 degrees, slight breeze, beautiful sunshine, empty skateboard park in the summertime. But an attendant there saying, I'm sorry, you can't skate here because you don't have the pads, because we didn't bring pads. I always had him wear a helmet, but he didn't have elbow pads and knee pads and all that sort of stuff. She couldn't skateboard there. And the first one, it was, like, annoying. The second one, it was like annoying times five. By the third one, actually, I found a skateboard park that was packed full of people skateboarding because they didn't have an attendant. Got to skateboard for a while. Tried a different skateboard park, also empty, with a person there with a clipboard attending it. And that's when I started getting angry and lecturing people and saying, yes, do you realize there's a skateboard park like a mile from here that's packed full of people skateboarding kids? Baker, you have nobody here. So what are you accomplishing? You. Why did you build a skateboard park? It's empty, on a gorgeous date. Nobody's using it. Well, we need to make sure kids are safe.
- [22:27]
Jack Armstrong
No, you don't.
- [22:28]
Joe Getty
Well, first of all, you don't, but you might as well not have a skateboard park. Either have one or don't, but you're not stopping kids from wrecking on their skateboard because they're not skateboarding or they're traveling further away to go to some place where they don't have to wear pads. And every. I said this at several skateboard parks, and all they did was look at me like I'm an angry lunatic. Partially because I was an angry lunatic. But I, like, I can't get in the headspace of anybody who could be an attendant or the parents who think that's a good idea. Better to have an empty skateboard park than to let our kids skin their knees or elbows.
- [23:10]
Jack Armstrong
The paternalism, probably a poor choice of words, and some of these people are literally fathers, but the. The condescension nanny ism of it, is disgusting to me. The idea that kids, all of A sudden, for the first time in human history, can't, within reasonable bounds, assess their own risk tolerance and their own willingness to endure the negative consequences of overdoing it. I mean, for the first time in human history, kids must be protected from banging up their elbows and knees. I do not get someone coming to that conclusion and being so pleased with themselves. I'm horrified by it, I'm disgusted by it, literally, because I see what it's doing to generation of kids, generations of kids. Why do kids have so much anxiety? Because they haven't been allowed, in general, because they haven't been allowed to, to develop a sense of risk tolerance throughout their lives and confidence that they know what they're doing. They're, they're veal calves.
- [24:16]
Joe Getty
That's indisputable. It's been documented, as we've talked about before. Europe has figured out that they're doing away with like the super safe parks and stuff. Like they're moving toward kids doing more dangerous stuff, banging their, you know, heads and elbows and stuff more often because it's good for you for all kinds of different emotional reasons. But I also wonder just what it does to children. I, I, I know with my kids, part of it, what it does to children to see all these stupid freaking, they don't make any sense laws. I know it's made my kids less respected. Respectful of all laws is what it's done. And of course it would, because when you're confronted with stupid ones, it makes you think, everybody who makes laws is stupid. So why would I pay attention to this one? Because that one's obviously dumb.
- [25:02]
Jack Armstrong
If Thomas Jefferson were here, he might say, first of all, what are those metal things flying through the sky? But he would also say, this reminds me of that discussion you guys had about rent controls like 20 minutes ago. This is the same thing. You have a market of faith or respect for the law, and your sons have seen more and more stupid, useless, paternalistic laws. Their faith in the law is declining. They will behave politically in a way that ends that as soon as they can, if indeed you can fight the nanny state and, and they will be beaten back by your son's disgust with the paternalism.
- [25:41]
Joe Getty
I know, I hope I know a woman who is super nice and very helpful to me and just like the nicest person in the world, been very helpful to me in all kinds of different ways in my life. But she told me the story and I kept my mouth shut about how when the skateboard park in my town opened up, how she and another mom, they Would go there on the weekends and set up and monitor to make sure all the kids were wearing the proper pads and helmets and everything like that. And she said she kept it up for a summer or two, but they just couldn't keep up the schedule. I didn't, I just like. Were you a kid ever Once and maybe a few girls didn't. Did you notice the boys did bang their knees and have bloody elbow. Have scabs on their elbows and knees constantly as a child. And did you think that that was just awful, like Auschwitz or something like that, that they were having scabs on their knees? It's like the most normal thing in the world for a 10 year old boy to have a scab on his knee.
- [26:41]
Jack Armstrong
Yeah. I can't hold back. I generally say something in situations like that. It's probably why I have very few friends. But.
- [26:47]
Joe Getty
Yeah, well, I can't stop short of you're a psycho because I think you are. I think you're.
- [26:52]
Jack Armstrong
See that's, that's your problem.
- [26:53]
Joe Getty
How do you not look around an empty skateboard park and think, well, this is somehow self defeating. If we have nobody using the skateboard park, I'm not sure what we're doing here.
- [27:05]
Jack Armstrong
Right. Exactly. Yeah, yeah. Well, yeah, yeah. You got to develop, going from the emotional gear one to five is you gotta, you gotta be able to settle into two and three there and, and make the argument, you know. I respectfully disagree. I think kids need to take risks and get banged up and learn that it won't kill them and decide how risky they want to live their lives. But seriously, I think it's great that kids get banged up.
- [27:26]
Joe Getty
Were you not a kid once? Do you think kids are built differently now? Are there like bones made of glass now? And they didn't used to be. I mean, what is your thing? Thought process. I just, it makes me insane, that sort of thing.
- [27:40]
Jack Armstrong
All right, my alternative to safety first plus the greatest quote ever on this topic from the great C.S. lewis after a quick word from our friends at Trust and Will. If you don't have a will and, or Trust, it could well be that your kids, your loved ones, your heirs will fight it out and hate each other and spend all their money on lawyers. That is a terrible thing to do to them. Get in contact with our friends at Trust and Will.
- [28:08]
Joe Getty
So it's a website you go to and it walks you through the whole thing and you start filling in information. I'm sure you start with name and address, but then you get accounts and all that sort of thing. Live customer support through chat, phone or email at any point if you get any troubles. But the step by step process guides you from start to finish. You could get this done a lot faster than you think and less expensively.
- [28:31]
Jack Armstrong
To create and manage your custom estate plan starting at $199. Secure your assets, protect your loved ones with trust and will get 20 off your estate plan documents by visiting trustandwill.com Armstrong it's state by state too. Custom for you. That's trustandwill.com Armstrong trustandwill.com Armstrong I wonder.
- [28:52]
Joe Getty
Why I can't let go of this stuff as well as I can. Like, I've had some unfortunate breaks in my life that I've been able to mostly let go of much better than I can let go of this sort of thing. We're driving around all these skateboard parks. Finally. I was just getting. Sam had been looking forward to the skateboard park so much. It was our vacation. We were there and we couldn't go anywhere. So I finally found a. I had to go to like two stores. Finally found a bike store where they sold knee pads and elbow pads, stuff like that, just so we could go skateboard. We went to one and they said they weren't the right kind of elbow pads. And I don't think I've ever been angrier in my life. And I just couldn't let it go. It was like my head was gonna pop off. I hate that feeling where I just. It's a cognitive dissonance. I just can't. My. I couldn't make the empty skate park. Skateboard park. Beautiful day. There's nothing wrong with this. It doesn't hurt. Anything to bang your knee all fit into my head. It just was making me crazy.
- [29:48]
Jack Armstrong
Right.
- [29:49]
Joe Getty
Right.
- [29:50]
Jack Armstrong
There is absolutely a vein of especially. You know, it clicked in my head when you got to that example of, oh, yeah, he's got elbow pads, but they're not the right kind.
- [29:58]
Joe Getty
Right.
- [30:00]
Jack Armstrong
That. That is absolutely. The intoxication of power aiding. What I was going to talk about here, just the great C.S. lewis quote which we've used many times on the show. But of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victim may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber barons. Cruelty may sometimes sleep. His cupidity or greed may at some point be satiated. But those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their conscience. So true. I want to popular popularize the saying. Maybe we got to get T shirts going. Safety third.
- [30:45]
Joe Getty
Yeah, I.
- [30:46]
Jack Armstrong
And people would ask, what? Wait, wait, isn't the expression safety first and the safe. Maybe the back of the safety third t shirt would have 1. Courage, 2. Curiosity, 3. Safety. Safety third.
- [31:01]
Joe Getty
Right.
- [31:03]
Jack Armstrong
I'm not talking about handing your four year old a 45, letting them squeeze off a couple of shots. We're talking about kids riding their bike to the park and playing ball.
- [31:13]
Joe Getty
I'm sure the one woman still tells stories about the bald lunatic because I remember walking away. Have fun monitoring your empty skateboard park. You're doing a lot of good for the world.
- [31:24]
Jack Armstrong
I was so mad. Yeah. She cannot conceive of what you were trying to communicate.
- [31:31]
Joe Getty
No, she thinks, thank God, if I hadn't been here, that lunatic would have let his kid skateboard without knee pads. And think of the horrors. How many people would have died.
- [31:42]
Jack Armstrong
It's a. It's a stereotype and it's oversimplified because there are many tough, smart, great women who've helped make America great. But we have gone from maybe too much of a daddy society to too much of a mommy.
- [31:53]
Joe Getty
Oh, without a doubt.
- [31:54]
Jack Armstrong
Oh, we are clutching our children to our. Our aprons and. And not letting them risk a single thing. Good Lord.
- [32:03]
Joe Getty
Yeah. We'll check in on the ceasefire. We got a bunch of other stuff coming up.
- [32:08]
Jack Armstrong
Armstrong and Getty.
- [32:10]
Joe Getty
Some disturbing news out of France, where 145 people were jabbed with needles during a music festival held across multiple cities this weekend. Police are now investigating whether the incidents were inspired by online posts encouraging people to target women in with syringes. Authorities say 12 arrests have been made so far. What?
- [32:33]
Jack Armstrong
Holy crap. I'm looking at the written version of this story. I mean, come on, everybody has the same reaction, right? Syringes full of what and by whom? For what purpose? Well, and they have maybe one suspect. Oh, a dozen suspects have been nabbed by the French authorities, but there's no word on the what and why.
- [32:59]
Joe Getty
I almost hope that it's some sort of organized group and not that TikTok challenges have this sort of power.
- [33:10]
Jack Armstrong
Oh, you think it could be that? Surely. Do you know anything about this?
- [33:14]
Unnamed Contributor
So there. There was speculation. And this isn't like, reported or anything. This was just speculation. I saw on one of the articles, video went viral a few months ago of this woman, Turkey, and she's in her full Muslim garb and she's next to a woman who is not of the Muslim faith. And she's wearing, the girl's like, just wearing a tank top or whatever. And the, the Muslim woman has a little needle in her purse and she pricks the girl's skin as like a symbol of like, I shouldn't be able to see that. And so there was some speculation that that might have been something along the lines, like there's all these women showing all of this skin at these music festivals and it's not respectful.
- [33:55]
Joe Getty
Now that is the sort of problem they've been having a lot of in France and a number of places in Europe. Yeah, I don't know if that's the case.
- [34:05]
Jack Armstrong
Well, nearly 150 concert girls, many of them teenage girls, were jabbed with syringes.
- [34:12]
Joe Getty
Now, you know, just making an observation, I guess, if it, if, if it did turn out to be young men, man, Mark Stein wrote about this all the time in his book America alone. Geez, 20 years ago or whatever, how news outlets always go to. With youths or young men and don't make it clear what's going on there. If these were young Muslim men, the media would downplay that. They always do. I don't know if it is in this case, it might not be at all. It might be all. Any other brand of lunatic. It.
- [34:47]
Jack Armstrong
The interior ministry said 145 victims across the nation reported being stabbed with needles. With Paris officials probing 13 cases in the capital.
- [34:57]
Joe Getty
What a weird story.
- [34:58]
Unnamed Contributor
But to go with what Joe said, I went through so many versions of this story and not one suspect description anywhere.
- [35:07]
Joe Getty
Hey, it happens all the time. Story out of Europe where there's a, where there's a riot or a beating or whatever with. And you try to get the details on that. You might have to go to your 15th news source before you find out. Oh, it was an Islam thing.
- [35:21]
Jack Armstrong
Yeah, I mean, we should have done the story once an hour for a week that I did last week about Elon Musk calling out the British government for actively suppressing knowledge of the grooming gangs and how they were heavily Asian, more specifically Pakistani, and how the government had denied it and local police were desperate to not say that and the press actively suppressed it. But Keir Starmer, the lefty pm, just got done with an audit that said, yeah, it's undeniably true that the bulk of these cases are Pakistani grooming gangs that are causing the exploitation, rape and sexual trafficking of these young English girls, primarily poorer girls. So, yeah, there is a culture in Europe of just don't say anything, don't say the M word or the I word? We don't. We don't want more trouble.
- [36:11]
Joe Getty
Well, I hope more information emerges on this whole needle stabbing story. God, that is disturbing. If you miss a segment, get the podcast. Armstrong and Getty on demand.
- [36:20]
Jack Armstrong
Armstrong and Getty? This is an I heart podcast.